When scientists talk about the cryosphere, they mean the places on Earth where water is in its solid form, frozen into ice or snow. Read more ...

Service Interruption

On Friday, 06 February 2015 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (USA Mountain Time), we will be performing scheduled maintenance, which may cause temporary disruptions to our Web site, applications, and FTP. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Data Quality

Quality Assessment Files

For all AMSR-E products, each HDF-EOS file is accompanied by a Quality Assessment (QA) file. The QA files can be accessed through FTP or Reverb. The contents of each QA file is unique to the product. The quality assessment is performed during standard product generation at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center (GHCC) - Science Investigator-led Processing System (SIPS). Should a product fail the assessment, the file is quarantined and the Team Leader Science Computing Facility is notified. After corrective action is taken, the file is reprocessed and forwarded to NSIDC for archive and distribution.

Quality flags

The quality flags found in individual products are detailed in each product's guide document. Please refer to the NSIDC AMSR-E/Aqua Data Summaries for access to product documentation.